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Redshirt
Leslie, killed by a dikironium cloud creature on Argus X; he later recovered]] '' kills two redshirts...]] Redshirt is a term used by fans and staff of Star Trek to refer first to the characters who wear red Starfleet uniforms, and secondly to refer to those characters who are expendable, and quite often killed off, sometimes in great numbers. :Please see the List of Starfleet casualties for a complete summary of crew losses. In the Original Series era, red uniforms were worn by members of the operations division. They normally performed security, engineering or support services (such as communications officers, administrators and yeomen) aboard starships and starbases. Of these, the security personnel were quite expendable. , , and in TOS Season 2 all featured four security redshirts dying in each episode. "The Changeling" has the most anonymity involved; all but one of the redshirts that die are unnamed, the other being Carlisle (Nomad also "killed" Mr. Scott, but was kind enough to restore him at Kirk's request). In , Kaplan, Marple, Hendorff and Mallory were all on one security team, killed one by one by the dangers of Gamma Trianguli VI. In , the dikironium cloud creature kills four security guards that we see, all in red shirts, including Ensign Rizzo. (It also kills a few crewmen aboard the ship, but we didn't get to see what color their shirts were.) One of the vampire cloud's victims doesn't quite count – Mr. Leslie would have been a fifth redshirted fellow killed in the outing, but a mention of him surviving was cut from the shoot of the episode. He clearly appears in later episodes, so either he has a twin, or he survived the attack. In terms of pure expendability, is the first and best in terms of sheer numbers: twelve crewpeople were lost; nine of them died instantly at the galactic barrier, and three more perished in the events at Delta Vega. We only saw those three die on screen, but we know that none of them were technically redshirts, as there were no red uniforms of the design they used in that episode, reused from (which itself featured three off screen deaths). The operations division was wearing beige at this point. died in 2370]] Nobody was really lost in Star Trek: The Animated Series, but Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced a new twist to the "redshirt" lore, as the uniform colors switched and operations division wore the gold uniforms and the command division took on the red shirts. They also became likely to die, a theme of crew deaths was dominated by the continuous loss of their flight controller. Lieutenant Torres probably survived , but the TNG era lost Haskell, Monroe, Dern, Nell Chilton, Hawk and Branson. Even the survivors usually got roughed up; the longest people to hold the position, Wesley Crusher and Ro Laren, both ended up leaving Starfleet. Non-''Enterprise'' crew redshirts hardly faired any better, demonstrating an alarming propensity for being killed, possessed, and/or otherwise coming to bad ends. Notable examples included Captain Tryla Scott, Commander Dexter Remmick, and the entire Senior Admiralty at Starfleet Command, who were taken over by alien parasites. ( ). Admiral Mark Jameson was killed by a de-aging medicine overdose. ( ) Admiral Erik Pressman was arrested in disgrace for violating the Treaty of Algeron ( ), and Admiral Matthew Dougherty was murdered by his Son'a co-conspirators. ( ) The only TNG episodes to feature death in large numbers had to do with the Borg. and and both noted eighteen off screen deaths (although the latter probably totaled a few more in later scenes). The ''Star Trek'' films kept the crew losses low for the most part, but the TOS era installments were dominated by redshirt deaths, as the dominant uniform style featured all personnel wearing red. noted that crew losses from the destruction of the 1701-D were low, however , , and all featured scores of battle-related crew deaths. As noted, the Wrath of Khan losses were all redshirts, but the TNG losses were more varied, but continued their pattern of conn officer attrition. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine featured many security personnel – such as Ensign Paul Gordon in – and engineers dying, sometimes in large numbers. However, while this maintains the tradition of TOS's most dangerous areas to work, these officers wore yellow shirts by this era. There was no pattern of redshirted crew loss until command officers were noted as dying in the war story arcs that dominated the last half of the series. However, the first known redshirt death on DS9 came when an unnamed officer was killed in ops by the Cardassian counter-insurgency program. ( ) The redshirted conn officer of the [[USS Defiant|USS Defiant]] also was killed during the ship's first battle with Dominion forces. ( ) In the Dominion War especially, entire fleets of starships were biting the dust, indiscriminate of shirt color. died at her post in 2371]] In Star Trek: Voyager, most initial crew deaths were in red, such as Cavit and Stadi (who was another flight controller). However, over the years it became clear that any color or department was dangerous in the Delta Quadrant, with gold being the most deadly. Since had no way to replace crew, the only massive deaths took place in alternate timelines, with the sole exception being the massive deaths that killed off a large number of the senior staff when the Caretaker's array displaced Voyager. Star Trek: Enterprise lost more engineers and MACOs than anyone else, consistent with their evolution into the Starfleet security forces. Both wear red as a department color (although MACOs seemed to wear splatter camouflage more than anything). Background Information * David Gerrold has often joked that the character he played in must have been the luckiest redshirt ever, to have lived long enough for his hair to have turned gray. * Star Trek: Enterprise producer and writer Mike Sussman, a longtime fan himself, fulfilled a lifelong dream by putting on an original series red shirt to portray a dead crewman aboard the starship ''Defiant'' in . :Sussman's trousers were the same ones worn by Gerrold during his DS9 cameo some eight years prior (Gerrold's name was stitched in them). Sussman's TOS-style boots had been worn previously by Avery Brooks. * "RedShirt" is the default player's name in the multi-player portion of the game Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force. Cultural references , redshirted engineer Welshie was killed]] The icon of the doomed redshirted crewman has translated to a number of other pop culture and literary media and parodies. ;Futurama'' : In a Star Trek parody episode, "Where No Fan Has Gone Before", a character created to replace James Doohan as Scotty in the cast was named Welshie. He (or more specifically, the actor who played him) was killed, dismembered, and vaporized by three separate blasts from a cloud creature named Melllvar. In addition, the Democratic Order of Planets (D.O.O.P.) has a military force composed of men in red uniforms, who are often utilized as cannon fodder. ;24 : During Season 5 when the Los Angeles headquarters for the Counter Terrorist Unit LA Domestic Unit is attacked with nerve gas, CTU security guards wearing red uniforms are among the dead. ;Family Guy : An ensign named Ricky was frustrated at being the only redshirt assigned to a landing party uniform, but ended up surviving long enough to comment on William Shatner's death. ;Galaxy Quest: Guy Fleegman (the actor who portrayed "Crewman Number 6" in one episode of the first television series) lamented in the middle of a crisis "I'm just the nameless no-body who gets killed in the first five minutes just to show how real the threat is..." :At another point Gwen DeMarco (Lt. Tawny Madison) comments upon seeing a group of innocent-looking aliens turn into savage monsters "We'd better get out of here before one of those things kills Guy!" :Guy survived the real-life adventure, and became a regular cast member on the second incarnation of the show, portraying "Security Chief Roc Ingersol". ;South Park : One of the children on a trapped school bus, on the edge of a cliff, waiting overnight for the bus driver to return with help, wore a red commander uniform, with an Enterprise assignment patch. He went outside the bus to scout around and was promptly eaten by a monster while TOS background music played. These elements of the episode tied into its being named for the TOS episode, . ;Lost : Boone told Locke that redshirts always get killed and Locke commented that Kirk "must have been a piss-poor captain." Ironically, Boone was the first cast member to die later that season. ;Robot Chicken : In a twist on the standard, when the ship loses power to life support, Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Dr. McCoy, and Toby The Redshirt beam onto the nearest planet. The redshirt is the only member of a landing party to bring a phaser, and the only one to survive. ;Stargate SG-1 : In an episode two characters hide in a cargo bay and one of them, played by Star Trek: Enterprise actor John Billingsley, becomes skeptical, saying, "We're all gonna die, we might as well wear red shirts..." ;Warhammer 40,000 :In the kill teams game, one of the wargear is named a redshirt. He has very low stats and the player will be rewarded if he lives until the end of the game. See also * ''Star Trek'' parodies Category:Star Trek de:Redshirt fr:Redshirt